Happy, Happy 2019! You are all an important part of RYH and we look forward to working with you to strengthen public education during this new year & beyond! Thank you so much for your participation AND a special shout out to all the donors who helped us raise more than $10,000 in our #RaiseOurVoices end of the year fundraising campaign! We far exceeded our goal and raised over $13,000!!! We’re also proud that we now have 43 monthly donors- we added 10 during this campaign. Wow!!! THANK YOU.

Raise Your Hand, founded by parents who mobilized in response to warnings in 2010 that class sizes might be increased to resolve budget deficits, finds itself again revisiting the classroom size problem in Chicago asCPS lists 54 schools for closure by the end of this year. These school closures reflect the CPS goal to fill classrooms with 30 students, as has been pointed out in the recentTribune article. The new CPS utilization formula allows for as many 36 students in classrooms.

This press release was sent out today and a chart with all CPS elementary schools detailing class size info was given to the Board of Ed. Note below that RYH is setting up a class-size hotline for parents to help advocate in situatinos where classrooms are above the recommended limits of 28 for K-3 and 31 for 4-8. Also note that a parent LSC rep should now be appointed to a class size committee when a school makes a complaint about class size to CPS.